Aztec
Discovered by Dr. John S. Newbury Oct. 1859

The first visitor of record was Dr. John S. Newberry, a geologist, in 1859. He found the pueblo in a fair state of preservation, with walls 25 feet high in places and many rooms undisturbed. From the rubble scattered about, he concluded that a large population had once lived there. Newberry saw the ruins before vandals and pot hunters got to them over the next half century. When the anthropologist Lewis H. Morgan investigated the ruins in 1878, he noted that a quarter of the pueblo's stones had been carted away by settlers for building material.

A few years later a local teacher and his students saw thing their more experienced predecessors had missed. Breaking through a wall, they found themselves in a room with many objects of obvious value to the Mesa Verdean inhabitants. This and other important material soon vanished as local explorers broke into rooms untouched for centuries. Not until 1889, when the site passed into private ownership, did the pueblo become relatively safe from looting. In 1916 the American Museum of Natural History began sponsoring excavations. Seven years later the site was declared a national monument.

Earl H. Morris's archeological work at Aztec will be remembered as long as there is interest in the prehistoric southwest. He was 25 when he headed up the first systematic dig at Aztec for the American Museum. He spent the next seven seasons excavating and stabilizing the West ruin, the Great Kiva, and a few rooms in the East Ruin. He made many finds, including the discovery that there were two distinct periods of occupation by the Anasazi. In the 1930's Morris returned to Aztec and supervised the reconstruction of the Great Kiva, based on his findings during excavation. Morris anticipated the refinement of archeological method that the decades would bring. He was content to leave part of West Ruin unexcavated for investigation by future archeologists with new techniques.
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Discovery